Islamic Malaga — alcazabas, Bobastro and the mountain minarets

• Alcazaba — a fortress-palace inside the city, not only a wall on a hill.
• Mozarab — a Christian living under Islamic rule.
• Morisco — a Muslim who remained after the Christian conquest and was required to convert.
• Minaret — the tower of a mosque. In the Axarquia many now carry church bells.

The Alcazaba sits above the Roman theatre and looks at the port. What you walk is mostly eleventh-century: a double wall, gated ramps, small palaces and gardens inside. It was a residence as well as a fort. Above it, Gibralfaro is the higher castle. Yusuf I of Granada rebuilt it in the fourteenth century so the hill could not be taken from behind. The path between the two is a climb. The view is the point of Gibralfaro; the rooms are in the Alcazaba.

• Alcazaba — map
• Gibralfaro — map

Antequera holds the inland gap. Its alcazaba is fourteenth-century, Nasrid, taken by Castile in 1410 — early, as these things went. From the walls you see the plain and the limestone ridge of El Torcal. The ridge is geology, not an Islamic monument. Come for the fortress if this is your road to Granada or Cordoba.

• Alcazaba of Antequera — map

Between Ardales and El Chorro the MA-448 climbs the Mesas de Villaverde. A wooden hut on that through-road sells the ticket. You park on the verge and walk about seven hundred metres past a wall, a quarry and a cistern.

The thing you come for is a Mozarab church cut into the sandstone: three aisles, horseshoe arches, three apses, facing east. It is the church that still reads as Mozarab work inside the old lands of al-Andalus. Umar ibn Hafsun used this ridge as his capital in the late ninth century and held it against Cordoba for decades, with Mozarabs and local converts behind him. He is thought to have become Christian around 899; the church belongs to that turn. Abd al-Rahman III took Bobastro in 928 and destroyed the town. What you see is that excavated nave, a Muslim cemetery nearby and the gorge of Los Gaitanes below — not streets or palaces. The Caminito del Rey is on the same road if you already planned it. That is another visit.

• Ruins of Bobastro — map

Ronda sits on a plate of rock with the Tajo opening under it. The Islamic town is still readable: the Gate of Almocabar on the south, stretches of wall, the church of Santa Maria la Mayor on the Friday mosque, San Sebastian with a minaret in its fabric, and the Arab baths down by the old river crossing — among the best preserved in Andalusia. Take the baths if you only enter one building besides the view.

• Gate of Almocabar — map
• Santa Maria la Mayor — map
• Arab baths — map

West and south the villages keep the next chapter. El Burgo, Igualeja and Parauta have church towers that began as minarets. Further on, the mountain towns that rose with the Moriscos against Philip II lead to the castle of Benadalid — it now stands over the cemetery — and the castle of Gaucin, looking toward Gibraltar. Those last two are silhouettes and a walk, not ticketed palaces.

• Castle of Benadalid — map
• Castle of Gaucin — map

East of the city the hills behind Velez-Malaga kept a tight Islamic settlement. Velez has its own alcazaba. Inland, a line of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century minarets still stands at the churches of Archez, Salares, Arenas, Corumbela, Daimalos and Benaque. They are brick towers with blind arches. You stop in the square, look up, and move on. Archez and Salares are the two to choose if the list is too long.

• Alcazaba of Velez-Malaga — map
• Archez — map
• Salares — map
• Arenas — map
• Corumbela — map
• Daimalos — map
• Benaque — map